Most industry analysts agree that the current VDI adoption rate is somewhere in the 3% to 5% range. (This is based on a total corporate desktop user base of 500 to 600 million, with current VDI use by 20 to 25 million users.) Furthermore, many in the industry believe that the total VDI market will grow to 100 to 125 million users.

Here's my question: If VDI adoption is only going to hit 20% or so, what do the other 80% of the world's corporate desktops look like?

The key thing to keep in mind about virtual desktop infrastructure (and related technologies like Microsoft Remote Desktop Session Host) is that it's for remotely delivering Windows applications and desktops from a data center. That desktop could be running in a data center on-premises, at a colocation facility or hosted by a cloud Desktop as a Service (DaaS) provider. In other words, VDI lets you "cloud-ify" existing Windows applications and desktops, since you can deliver them to any device with any form factor.

A lot of people claim that "Windows is dead" or "the desktop is dead." While it's true many tasks that once required Windows desktops can now be done via Software as a Service apps, Web apps, from Macs and from iPads, the reality is that companies rely on countless Windows applications that aren't going away anytime soon.

Challenges of VDI

VDI technologies are great for delivering those Windows applications to any device, from any location, at any time. But VDI has downsides, too. For one, it's expensive. Building and delivering a VDI desktop is much more involved than just buying your users $500 laptops every four years. VDI is also restricted by the fact that users need to have a fairly low-latency connection, which means it's limited in 3G and 4G environments and is completely unavailable when the users are offline. Finally, VDI is complicated to set up. If customers outsource that complexity by paying for VDI as a service from a DaaS provider, then they lock themselves into monthly fees.

The other challenge is that because VDI technology delivers Windows desktop applications to whatever device the user has, its practicality is limited when users want to work on tablets and phones. This is not a fault of VDI; it's because the applications that VDI delivers were designed to be used on devices with keyboards, mice and large screens -- three things that tablets and phones don't have.

VDI adoption will continue and it will be useful for those scenarios where you accept higher costs in exchange for the benefit of delivering Windows desktop applications to users who want access from non-Windows and mobile devices with good connections. But for all the "other" use cases, such as when users have Windows-based desktops and laptops, there are less expensive alternatives to VDI. That will make up that "other" 80% of the market, even five years from now.

Both of these approaches are more economical than VDI when it comes to getting managed Windows applications to laptops and desktops. Combined with traditional application installations, they will make up the bulk of Windows application delivery for years to come.

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Gone are the days when you have to worry about applications that have been developed to run only on Windows-based systems. Using VDI, there is no need to worry about limited access because users can utilize any device of any hardware architecture and operating system to access applications delivered via virtual desktops. Mobile office can be easily achieved.

The failure to protect critical data can be financially devastating to your organization.with VDI the data us processed and stored on the central server not on the local device protecting the data even if the client device is compromised.